SOURCE: “Against Novels: Fanny Fern's Newspaper Fictions and the Reform of Print Culture,” in American Periodicals, Vol. 6, 1996, pp. 61-91.

In the following essay, Pettengill examines newspaper and novel writing in the mid-nineteenth century and shows how Fern's work in these two genres at times blurred the distinction between them.

I. Introduction: Reflections on Genre and Hierarchy

To The Reader

I present you with my first continuous story. I do not dignify it by the name of “A novel.” I am aware that it is entirely at variance with all set rules for novel writing. There is no intricate plot; there are no startling developments; no hair-breadth escapes. I have compressed into one volume what I might have expanded into two or three. I have avoided long introductions and descriptions, and have entered unceremoniously, and unannounced, into people's houses, without stopping to ring the bell …

—Fanny Fern, Preface to...